


No Accidents Around Here

by leslielol



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Past Abuse, Scars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-17
Updated: 2019-02-17
Packaged: 2019-10-29 23:18:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17817446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leslielol/pseuds/leslielol
Summary: He keeps so still, it’s just as well that he has a secret.Barba doesn't like to talk about it. Carisi finds he doesn't really have to ask.





	No Accidents Around Here

**Author's Note:**

> So I literally haven’t worked on Mode & Moment for the past month, instead starting and stopping a bunch of one shots (A kidnapping! More singing! Flirty hijinks! Attempted murder, but different!). I decided if I could finish _just one,_ I would go back to that behemoth piece of shit and keep hacking away towards an ending. (I totally have one figured out, it’s just the………..getting there.)
> 
> The title is from Peter Gabriel’s _Lay Your Hands on Me._

There’s a hand in Barba’s hair, idling fingertips skating figure-eights at the base of his neck. The motions are soothing and Barba finds himself on the very cusp of sleep, poised in so fine a place that whether he falls or not is entirely up to chance. It’s a nod one way or the other, a tip of the head, the curl of an eyelash. 

The deciding factor ultimately is not his own: sex has put his mind at ease, but his partner’s is churning out ideas, pulling them back, starting anew. Barba can hear the whole messy process in the span of a few soft hums and breaths, some held, others betrayed. 

He’s thinking of all the things he means to say, and saying none of them.

It’s tiresome, Barba thinks, which is some achievement given the past hour’s efforts.

Then, imagining himself doubled twice and once removed from the bed, Barba sees over their union, and reads like an inscription from the other man’s hands: where they wandered and where they drew back, the turns they took so as not to overstep. He dances around a weighty sentiment, because it's one thing to see it, to chance a peak, recognize the innate error, and choke back a noise of innate and primal dissatisfaction. It’s well another to stare.

The decision _to overstep,_ then, with a palm that presses warmly over the jut of his naked hip, surprises him. 

As does the hasty retreat.

Because for all Barba’s guessing at inscriptions, his partner has gone and read ahead.

Another hum tapers off into a sigh.

“I know it’s killing you,” Barba says, and for the weight sleep bears on his voice, thinks for a moment his speech is unintelligible, “That I don’t want to talk about it, because you _clearly_ want to ask.”

By the tail end of it--this carefully worded taunt--Barba achieves the haughty attitude he was going for, and in doing so hopes to inspire his bedfellow to meet it. He wants a huff of laughter and to confuse this man into embarrassed silence, or else he wants him to say only what will save face. Mostly, he wants the hands that have given purchase on his body to relinquish every cent. 

Unfortunately, all six-feet-two-inches of Dominick Carisi seems to have convinced himself that what he has--even for not knowing quite _what,_ beyond the proximity needed to grasp it--has more value in even his fumbling hands than it would surrendered. It’s Barba’s hesitation to tell him off or angle himself for more that gives away the game.

He keeps so still, it’s just as well that he has a secret. 

“I just want to know that you’re okay,” Carisi says, breath hot and funky against Barba’s ear. He does himself one better, speaking sweetly and going on even to mean it. 

“Or if you’re not, if maybe you could be. If maybe I could help with that, somehow. ‘Cause if you’re sufferin’ in silence… you know… don’t.”

The touch on his hip returns, unsure but holding steady.

 _“‘Don’t,’”_ Barba repeats, perfunctory and clipped enough in his tone to get across that he’s only teasing. 

Carisi, he’s found, can be a little soft after sex. His synapses are are spent, and his thoughts are as labored as his touch which, while persistent, does not move to excite or treat itself. Carisi only holds on, his barely-there grip never testing what it has, only keeping to the cause as if to prove it’s ever been in his grasp at all. 

Barba thinks--but doesn’t want to tell him--of a well-meaning ex, someone who had the habit of sending him e-mails with the subject line “?” and the sole text of a link to some article about scar tissue removal, or tattoos made to fit into and disguise a person’s twisted and ruined flesh, or a myriad of other efforts and attempts at altering what was there, fixed so well into his skin it may as well have stirred from his very bones.

Barba understands the intrigue: the worst of it is on his back, gripping his flesh in an invisible fist, then caking it with color and errant designs. Racing stripes and splotches startle the otherwise smooth expanse of his body, and only a few ropey lines find their way onto his front. If only seen from the right angles, all this could be avoidable. 

A lifetime of perfunctory blowjobs is hardly a life worth living, but then, Barba’s had his doubts about those who set about consuming the whole of him, only to spit back the parts that don’t delight the palate. Some were frightened off, concerned with every deliberate stroke. One even told him, quite solemnly, that it made him think of a disease. A _plight_ ravaging internally and manifesting on the body. 

He’d reached for his shirt then, and spoke as he hurriedly plunged the buttons through holes, careless as to whether or not they matched: _I’ve had a scare before. I’m sorry._

In his haste to leave, he’d very nearly said what he meant: _This-- **you** \--are scary._

Others still were well-meaning but hapless, defaulting towards pity because that was the nearer step from shock than understanding. 

Admittedly, Barba hasn’t inquired as to the opinions of many on the matter, much less sought to change them. He knows he’s not the one who has to see the worst of it. In his darker moments, Barba is certain as to the mark’s purpose, if not its itemized origins: his father’s intention was to mar him for future viewings, to skew the narrative and forever have his say.

Because there is wild anger in the moment’s aftermath, but cunning, too, and a pervasive sense of retribution. Tit for tat. 

_If a boy so chooses to act out and humiliate his father, that boy will soon learn better._

Barba didn’t tell the story--because who should need to know?--but his body was a sufficient enough end: something wrong and awful happened there, below his shoulder blades, jumping the track of his spine. It happened with great force and determination. It happened over and over. 

And the twists and gaps of ruined swaths of flesh are all easier to accept if one can believe they were deserved.

Carisi doesn’t think that. Barba can’t be sure, but he’s inclined to entertain an alternative for as long as the man’s feather-soft examination continues. Carisi holds himself like a scholar, and bears the scene fully. The crime is splashed before his eyes, but it’s old, and what’s left to suss out isn’t from the abrasions themselves, but the permeating sense of being one of a small few who have been summoned to their company. 

It’s careful, his touch, but because the hand doesn’t raise itself and crab inward, Barba cannot subscribe wariness to it. In Carisi’s grasp, Barba feels himself rendered delicately, witnessed as a treasure. 

“It doesn’t hurt,” Barba says, and smiles when Carisi huffs dejectedly against his bare neck.

“That’s not what I asked.”

“You didn’t _ask_ anything. You’ve been very careful about that.” 

In response, the hand goes flat, becomes a full presence rather than an exploratory committee of five faint voices. Barba stills in shock; he’s not unused to Carisi’s touch; more often than not, Carisi figures close to him in the throws of sleep, seeking his body and fitting snugly against it. There is always a t-shirt to account for, however, that saintly cover in heathered grey, and Barba wonders if Carisi hadn’t planned things--fucking, insisting Barba stay in bed, cleaning him, kissing him, keeping him sated and pleased, _making him forget himself_ \--so as to end up precisely where they are. 

“It’s okay,” Carisi murmurs. 

Again, not a question. 

He fits himself flush with Barba, exchanging the touch of an open hand for the whole of his torso. His limbs overtake Barba's middle, sinking into the imperceptible gaps of space between them, gaining ground by taking those long winding backwoods paths. Like an athlete, he runs routes between elbows and armpits. He meets his own hands together amidst a forest of chest hair, overgrowth where below is a rapidly beating heart.

Once there, once _this,_ he instigates nothing.

Barba does not feel a customary rut against his backside, a move as filthy as it is delightful, and is sorry for being denied the opportunity to roll his eyes and throw his head back, feigning playful disgust. It’s a good look for him.

(Better still when someone is properly poised to see it.)

Nor is there any groping for what's already been had, and the kiss that arrives at the nape of his neck is a solitary punctuation on the night, not window dressing pinned up and around the request for more.

Instead, Carisi does him one better: he sighs, wholly and willfully contented.

Barba isn't familiar with the sound coming from _behind_ him. He’s embarrassed to admit he’s startled. 

He can't imagine they're going to stay this way, can’t even conceive of Carisi not backing out as he takes stock of the strangeness he feels pressed against him. His brain will soon register the alien surface and reason that it’s thrilling enough to land on the moon, but he doesn’t want to _live there._

Barba realizes he’s holding his breath for the coming departure, and that the steady, ready breathing he feels is Carisi’s stirring him by association. It’s appropriate that Barba feels like a leech; there’s a part of him, discolored and curving along his seventh rib on his left side, that shares the creature’s shape and consistency. 

Barba’s next breath in a short, ugly affair: it plunges only as far as the deep of his throat. He draws it back like a hiccup. He’s fully awake now, the scene intensely clear, shocked through with blue light so as to stand illuminated in the forefront of his mind. 

His eyes snap open and he sees his bedroom spill out ahead of him: shades of blue and lavender discolor what, come morning, will present rightfully in greys and whites. There are empty corners, a neat bedside table, a single phone charger. He fixes his sights on what suddenly feels out of place: a chair he never uses but loves dearly, because it was his grandmother’s, spirited off the island same as she was. It’s seafoam green, a constant at any time, day or night. Straight-backed and daring, it is a simple rocking chair of clean lines and solid making. 

He was nearly ten when it came back to her through ways and means she never explained, though he quickly came to understand its worth as she made him move it about her apartment, certain it had a home. He was forty when he moved it again--not quite the distance to Cuba, but worlds away all the same. 

When Barba closes his eyes, he can feel Carisi’s weight against him--not in him, or on him, like Barba’s known before. He excuses every bare wall and empty chair, and focuses solely on that fixed point on a wavering horizon: the solid press of a body in search of a home.

The hands on his chest rake through the hair there and the bright new thrill of having someone learn him blindly takes Barba out of his head. 

From Carisi comes a warm and appreciative, _“Nice.”_

An overreach, Barba thinks, but as much can be said of everything: the passes made, the drinks marshalling dinners, the flirting, the fucking. A veritable professional lifetime of the former three, and months now of the latter makes for a tidy sum Barba cannot so easily disregard. They've become close. There is ample evidence to suggest as much was desired from both parties, and Barba supposes that stands as precedent for one body to respond to and consolidate the other’s pain. 

Or, as the argument figures in Carisi's mind, _Heaven forbid he embrace his boyfriend._

“Are you uncomfortable?” Carisi asks. His cheek hollows against Barba’s shoulder as he speaks. “Or is this okay?”

“Little bit of column A, little bit of column B.” 

His breath hitches. He may as well throw open the doors to every Catholic church from here to the Bronx and proclaim himself a long-suffering believer if he thinks for one second Carisi didn’t catch it. 

He’s not like this in the whole host of ways in which Carisi knows him: firing legal warning shots in the precinct, championing justice in the courtroom, even four hours deep into an all-nighter in his office. There, he can render himself more fully human, with clothes and words and arguments all lending themselves to the cause. 

His mind doesn’t betray him with the same cruel ease of his body.

“...I’ll stop if you want me to.” 

Barba bites his tongue.

He is, ostensibly and for all purposes, a lonely man. He knows he was dealt a pox by one hand, knows he gamely invites solitude with the other. He knows he stands balanced in an unnatural state, bare feet curled atop a singular pillar, rising from nowhere, drawn to nothing. He exists as all men do: alone, save for the distant visions of themselves in others, likewise squinting into that impermeable mist. 

The longing he feels teases him skyward, but Barba holds still. Because while he can never force himself not to want what’s been denied to him, or ask for what won’t be freely given, he can manage his expectations so as to not suffer the losses so acutely. It’s a small victory only, which makes it all the easier to compromise himself, inch by inch. To step one foot off that ledge, to _try._

Such is the cost of his desperation: hope makes him delirious, still. He hasn’t numbed himself to that. He thinks, even if he plummets for this leap, the fall--

\--would make him feel beautiful. 

He stares at the chair again, its beams locked and precise. Carisi hasn’t slackened his hold yet, even for Barba’s silence. 

There is no way in which he does not want this for himself. There is no lie that won’t streak and spread like paint thinner over the truth radiating from his thrumming heart and aching limbs. 

He knows if he answers, he'll plea.

If he asks, he'll beg. 

He swallows, then says, “I'm going to sleep.” His tone is appropriately prim and sharp. 

He says, “You do what you want.” 

There’s nothing, at first. 

Just Barba’s heart outpacing Carisi’s by a terribly wide margin. 

Then, the bed whines and the sheets are a rush of whispered voices as Carisi swings one long leg over Barba’s as if he’s intending to ride sidesaddle, and westward, into the unincorporated territories. He simultaneously noses forward, burying his face into the very nape of Barba’s neck so that, were his eyes open, he could peer down a length of spine. 

He sighs fitfully for having made it this far, arriving at that most ardent stretch of Barba’s personality--his ego--and squeezing through the solitary crack in its facade.

“What are you doing?”

He’s been whispering all this while--they both have--because the dark blue night and the late hour lend themselves to the act, and decorum necessitates it, but that vanishes in an instant. Barba speaks at a normal volume, if not a touch shrilly.

“Is--are you going to _wrestle me?”_

Carisi grins broadly, a vision Barba feels expand over the base of his neck, teeth and lips pressing there as though the vertebra and spinal cord will transport its inherent idea more swiftly to Barba’s mind. If that wasn’t enough, Carisi huffs out a breath, and if Barba had been floating before, he is sunk, now. Carisi’s weight is split among loping arms, adventurous legs, and the unbothered press of obsentibly _his best face_ to Barba’s worst. 

But, God, he’s clinging on for dear life. 

“Weren’t you going to sleep?”

He yawns deliberately against Barba’s ear, then kisses its shell. In the dark, Carisi can’t see the shade of pink it’s become. 

-

They part during the night, inch back together, sprawl and seek all things: touch, warmth, another beating heart. It isn’t spectacular in any sense save for Barba being unable to recall so fine a sleep, his movements boundless now that that cold, blank space wasn’t lodged between him and the world. 

He awakes able to remember that he wasn’t hurting, he’d only been hurt. 

It’s the first thought that finds him as he opens his eyes and focuses on the empty space ahead of him: the chair in the corner of his bedroom is still blue, even if the walls and floor are not. Behind him, where there is still the steady breathing of a man who blushes at the term _lover,_ Barba feels cool uninterrupted air over his shoulders and down his backside. The room is fuzzy with light. The covers are twisted at their feet, while the sheet tenting over his hip shields nothing. 

For Barba, none of these are disparate facts; they arrive as one daunting truth. 

“How long have you been staring at me?” 

Barba hears himself for half-awake: a scratch at the back of his throat throws itself like an impasse, and the struggle around it renders him breathless. Carisi’s voice is--predictably--loose and clear. 

He sounds entirely like himself when he says simply, “Just making up for lost time.”

Carisi puts a hand on the back of Barba’s head to smooth down a cowlick. It hasn’t been bothering him--if anything, he’s thrilled that something so willful could affix itself to Barba’s person, it gives him _hope_ \--but it’s something Barba would surely purse his lips at when he discovered it later, hours from now, when they rouse themselves from bed. Carisi wants to save him the trouble. 

Barba waves a hand, shooing him away. 

“Stop, stop. I know what it looks like.”

And Carisi forgets, for a second, what they’re talking about.

“Did you forgive him?”

 _That’s a new one,_ Barba thinks. And still, he won’t answer.

“Why? Do you think I should?” 

Barba shifts from his right side to his left in time to see Carisi shrug--not a “no,” then, but an abdication of interest. He doesn’t actually want to know, and admits as much. 

“I guess I wasn’t really asking with intent,” he says, sheepish. “Sorry. I just wanted to see if you’d tell me.”

“There’s nothing to say. It speaks for itself.” 

“Not for him?” Carisi asks, and Barba bristles at the thought of giving himself away so easily. He blames it on the early hour and on the things sunlight does when it hits the back of Carisi’s head, throwing gold back into his greys and canonizing him as a saint. 

He starts to unravel himself from the whirling Charybdis of his bedsheets; he can’t have fucked a saint. 

“You were unappreciated,” Carisi says. The reluctance in his voice doesn’t hinder Barba in his efforts, but it does afford Carisi the man’s gaze. Barba watches him, curious, only to see Carisi staring between them as though he can’t fathom how they both got here, either. 

Then, with every shred of certainty he can summon, “And you were willful. And brave.” 

Honestly, Barba doesn’t remember.

He likes the way Carisi tells it, though. 

Rather than agree or respond at all, really, Barba throws an arm out to retrieve his phone from the bedside table. Carisi is quick to intercept, then catches Barba’s annoyed look with a hopeful smile.

“You got anywhere to be today?” he asks, already knowing the answer. “I'll make breakfast. Stay in bed. Just like this.” 

He kisses Barba and trails a hand down the length of him as he scrambles off the bed. Barba doesn’t attempt to stall him; Carisi himself is a slice served with a meal. There will be an aggressive heap of protein with his coffee whether he likes it or not. 

He sits back in bed and sets upon his email in earnest, though the requests for meetings and influx of police reports quickly escape his interest. 

He thinks instead about how strange a place he’s in, drawn as close as he was to answering questions, had Carisi asked them. 

Barba tries to imagine what he could have said, what truths are still within his grasp. 

School hangs like a setting sun in his memory, with his undergraduate studies at NYU coming to an end and Harvard Law on the horizon. Alex threw a party for him, invited the whole neighborhood and packed them snug and sweaty into a no-name bar with an expired liquor license and endless dance beats. 

It’s from there that Barba struggles to remember for himself, and he doesn’t care to trust--not fully--what others have told him. 

A university friend made the trip up, up, up, to the Bronx, wanting to celebrate his friend, too. Maybe they hugged, maybe they danced.

 _Your boyfriend?_ Yelenia had asked, gently, like she knew to be more delicate with the truth. Alex had answered for him, assuring them all, _No._

But that was later, weeks after the fact, and nearer to the time when Barba could recline without wincing.

He remembers being thrown to the floor of his bedroom. 

He remembers the first blow, and the second, the sixth landing somewhere with him in the kitchen. He remembers broken glass, cold air, lamp light, and shouting--not his own, not his father’s. 

He doesn’t remember waking up in a hospital room and leaving soon after. He doesn’t remember police seeking his statement, but chalks that up to them never being called.

He knows by heart his mother taking him to a hotel, and the argument that followed. _He’s not gone? After this?_

He remembers her crying silently--just tears, same as his--in the car illegally parked ahead of a hotel off the Thruway. He remembers never feeling so far from home. 

He knows he asked to be taken to his boyfriend’s apartment, using the word aloud for the first time. 

He knows she refused.

He knows his life started anew after that. 

Barba wills himself out of his own mind so that he can sit and listen, undisturbed, to the hum and rustle of Carisi ushering about his kitchen. The coffee machine is set and the fridge is rooted through without so much as a mention, a thought towards permission. Carisi is well at home, same as he had in bed where he laid himself into Barba, resting their forms edge-to-edge. 

Barba is overcome by the pressing thought that this man is the genuine article, and the rush to do something about that follows quickly after. Absent the ugly fiction painted on his back, Barba has lost lovers for a whole myriad of reasons. He won’t add “ungrateful host” to the list. 

He gets up, ducks into the bathroom to brush his teeth and make a more valiant attempt on the cowlick. He feels uneasy and the mirror confirms as much: he’s naked, just himself in his entirety. 

Navy blue joggers come on and a t-shirt is at the ready: grey, soft, an unincorporated piece of uniform. It’s enough to dispel looks if not thoughts. It’s where he feels safest, or did--until he was stripped and left bare, then gathered up and kept whole, all in the span of a night. 

Barba reconstitutes a question of his own: **_If_** _he’s not gone? After this?_

He abandons the shirt to the arm of the seafoam-colored chair in the forgotten corner of his bedroom.

He’s not a step out into the open--and doubting himself enormously--when Carisi looks up, finds him, and smiles. 

“Guess you knew you didn’t have any serving trays, huh?”

Barba takes his last stand on the opposite side of the bartop counter, watching Carisi as he works around the kitchen island. Both platforms boast veins of pink in the otherwise startlingly-white marble there, which Barba takes into consideration when he replies coolly, “It crossed my mind that I am not Martha Stewart.” 

Carisi rolls his eyes and continues halving cherry tomatoes. 

“Ah, well, you’re still pretty great. Regardless.”

Barba plants himself on a barstool and smirks. “Charming.” 

Carisi's neat piles of diced peppers, spinach leaves, and tomato chunks disappear into the skillet with a resounding hiss and a ballooning of sweet smells. He turns his back on it so as to present Barba with a smile that is delightfully over-confident and wiley. He doesn’t say anything, just takes in the scene with all the joy that it affords him. 

Finally: “Come here.”

Barba gives a shake of his head, then lifts his chin to indicate the meal beginning to take shape behind Carisi on the stove. “You’ll burn my eggs.” 

Carisi takes genuine offense to this, asking, “Have I _ever_ burned your eggs, Rafael?” 

Hearing his first name jostles Barba from the deceptive comfort of the scene. He tries to school his expression just as quickly, but it’s all for naught, as much the same unease is mirrored in Carisi, who drops his head to needlessly study his breakfast scramble.

Because that much is true: he hasn’t burned them yet. 

It wouldn’t be strange to be reminded of who they are, except for the past several years they’ve spent shielding themselves with surnames and titles. _Rafael_ isn’t so new a play (because Carisi is nothing if not an idealist), but its counterparts _Sonny_ (for when Barba wants to be sickly sweet) and _Dominick_ (for when Barba wants everything else) are relative unknowns in the game.

Barba knows it’s questionable: that his best relationship was a professional one, that he wouldn’t have made the connection without every working system in industry and civilization culminating into that most mundane playing field of _business hours._ He should know better than to dip twice from this well, but in this as in many things, Barba is as reckless as he is wanting. 

He comforts himself with the scores of people he’s worked with and _not_ known intimately. There’s a whole rolodex on his desk to suggest he’s a perfectly respectable colleague and civic-minded individual. 

Barba then looks at Carisi, who’s shaken the moment off with the ease and aplomb of a man who knows never to accessorize his boxers with disappointment, who is beautiful by every measure--the likes of Botticelli, Buonarroti, and Michelangelo wouldn't turn their noses up at those bright eyes and pinched-pink features--who is matched only in beauty by the kindness imbued in his entire being. 

Barba decides it's asinine not to be pleased that _this_ should be his one mistake.

“Thank you,” he hears himself say. “Sonny. For last night.” 

He wills himself not to look ashamed for needing what Carisi had given him, or wanting it at all. The truth of the matter invades his voice, however, as Barba hears himself soften.

“It was...very special for me.”

As if Barba needs further reminder that Carisi has--at every juncture--smiled gently and taken whatever stunted moment in stride, Carisi begins to speak.

“You know how we don’t really talk about what it is we’re doing, here? That’s probably going to change.” He pauses to take the skillet off the burner, then clears his throat. The rest comes marching out as if ordered: “‘Cause I want to tell you right now that I love you, and I think that kind of presumes a… an open door policy.”

What breath he didn't thrust into that sentiment, Carisi swallows. He readies two plates, and doesn't start to get nervous until he sets down the coffee, too. 

Barba’s eyes are fixed on him, their widest, warmest green. 

“You don’t, uh, have to say it back.” 

To fill the silence, Carisi fills his mouth: first, coffee enough to burn his tongue, then a heap of cheesy, peppery, scrambled eggs that aren't exactly known for their capacity as a natural balm.

It’s not that he’s particularly smooth, Barba thinks; it’s just that he _keeps talking._

“Really.” Carisi brandishes a hand, stirring up the air between them. “You not sayin’ anything isn’t eating me alive. I’m totally fine with just the staring. Totally, totally fine.”

Barba sinks a little more readily into his barstool and, he thinks, into the very skin on his bones. The smile that runs like a crescent moon over his face has a matching figure on his back, but the urgent need to hide either--once a cold and constant hand on his throat--has loosened its grip. Barba reaches out and takes his coffee, brushing Carisi’s hand and indulging in--stealing, really, just once more before it becomes a given--that tantalizing transfer of heat from body to body. 

“Me, too.”


End file.
